Public speaking is with us every day. From listening to the radio or television to when we are in a position in which we must speak in front of a larger audience. In this paper public speaking, more precisely speaking on the radio is discussed. In Slovenia, there used to be only public radio – Radio television Slovenia. Soon commercial radio stations appeared and they started to fight for their audience as they needed more funds from sponsors. That could only be done with a high percentage of listeners. For this reason, commercial radio stations have taken a more friendly-like approach towards listeners. This means using more colloquial language, less informative content and more entertainment. On the other hand, public radio does not depend on advertisement funds, but it has legal obligation to inform and educate people. Due to this, more informative, educational and entertaining programmes are created. In this paper, the focus is also on language education of radio speakers. On the public radio, it is still as demanding and hard as it used to be. The speakers cannot go in front of the microphone unless they have completed one year of education. On commercial radios on the other hand, everyone that meets the radio station’s requirements, can speak on air. Language education is rare or there is not any. From the results of a survey that has been made for this paper, it has been found out that most people who listen to commercial radios, do not care so much for the language quality as they do for the good music and entertainment. Listeners that prefer public radio, give bigger importance on the language. Therefore, we can notice a big difference between public and commercial radios. Public radio cares for literary language, at least on their first and third programme, the second programme has a little bit more freedom as for the language is concerned, but it is still in the range of standard language. Commercial radios, on the other hand, are purposely using colloquial language, because it brings them closer to listeners, whose interest is not so much information as it is entertainment.
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